where they appear in
their annual winter migrations.

Probably the one most interesting spot in the frozen port city was the
American expeditionary post-office. Here at irregular intervals, at
first via ice-breaker, which battled its way up to the edge of the ice
crusted coast north of Economia, came our mail bags from home. Later
those bags came in hundreds of miles over the winter snow roads, hauled
by shaggy ponies driven by hairy, weather-beaten moujiks. Mail-letters,
papers, little things from home, the word still connotes pleasure to us.
Mail days were boon days, and at the mail-place a detail always arrived
early and cheerful.

[Illustration: Two men baking bread at a large fireplace-like oven.]
U. S. OFFICIAL PHOTO
Russian Masonry Stove--American Convalescent Hospital

[Illustration: Woman ironing clothes.]
U. S. OFFICIAL PHOTO
Pvt. Allikas Finds His Mother in Archangel

[Illustration: Four men setting type and two observing.]
U. S OFFICIAL PHOTO
Printing "The American Sentinel"

Familiar sights in the streets of winter Archangel were the working
parties composed of Bolshevik prisoners of war. Except for the doughboy
guard it might have been difficult to tell them from a free working
party. They all looked alike. In fact, many a scowling face on a passing
sled would have matched the Bolo clothes better than some of those
boyish faces under guard. And how the prisoners came to depend on the
doughboy. Several times it was known and laughingly told about that Bolo
prisoners individually managed to escape, sneak home or to a
confederate's home, get food, money and clean clothes, and then report
back to the American guards. They preferred to be prisoners rather than
to remain at large. Once a worried corporal of a prisoner guard detail
at the convalescent hospital was inventing a story to account to the
sergeant for his A. W. O. L. prisoner when to his mingled feeling of
relief and disgust, in walked the lost prisoner, nitchevo, khorashaw.

The corporal felt about as sheepish as a sergeant and corporal of
another company had felt one night when they had spent an hour and a
half outmaneuvering the sentries, carrying off a big heavy case to a
dark spot, and quietly opening the case found that instead of Scotch
"influenza cure" it was a box of horseshoes. In that case horseshoes
meant no luck.

Is war cruel? In that city of Archangel with nowhere to retreat, nervous
times were bound to come. "The win